Young people from the Foróige Nenagh Youth Project have taken part in an event to mark EU Code Week. The 'Mega Dojo' was held by CoderDojo Mid West and hosted by LIT, with an attendance of over 750 young people. The ten young people from Foróige in Nenagh got involved in a “hackathon” at the event.
The challenge for the hackathon was to identify a problem in your community and using technology address this problem. Each team worked tirelessly for 4 hours to identify a problem, come up with a technology based solution and present their ideas to a panel of judges including MEP Seán Kelly, Enterprise Development and Business Liaison Manager for LIT, Gillian Barry, and Pat Carroll, Startup Community Manager at Bank of Ireland. They Foróige Nenagh team won!
Gillian Barry of LIT said “These young people are the future, I have seen adults with multi-million Euro companies not perform to the level of these young people here today.” She credited the work of the staff in Nenagh in identifying the combination of technology and entrepreneurship as a bright future for the young people involved in the project.
MEP Seán Kelly said, “The winners today showed fantastic skill and vision in solving a problem and did themselves proud in standing in front of the crowd to present to us judges.”
L-R: Stephen Power (Foróige NFTE Youth Worker), Sophie Hogan, Weronika Urbanik, Anna Powell, Emily O’Reilly, Amy Lombard, David Dillon, MEP Seán Kelly, Caitlin Heffernan, Jack O’Brien, Keelan Comerford, Denis Rohan, Olivia O’Sullivan (Foróige Youth Worker), Pat Carroll (Startup Community Manager, Bank of Ireland) and Gillian Barry (Enterprise Development & Business Liaison Manager, LIT).